


silent nights

by thearcherballet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Character Death, F/M, Grief, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:28:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearcherballet/pseuds/thearcherballet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night is still, like an ellipsis at the end of a novel you ravished in one day.  She feels like she’s hanging off a cliff by her nails, a moment of silent reflection as she stumbles between life or death.  An invisible weight exponentially crushes her chest as she absently brushes the tip of her fingers against her husband’s breathing body.<br/>She’s supposed to have gotten used to this. And yet, the fact that she’s still here astounds her.  They should’ve died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silent nights

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I hope you like it! go to my tumblr and tell me what you think @thearcherballet. happy (?) jilytober. this is a lot of angst and grief. you’ll see.  
> tw: anxiety, ptsd, death, suicidal ideation (?)

The night is still, like an ellipsis at the end of a novel you ravished in one day.  She feels like she’s hanging off a cliff by her nails, a moment of silent reflection as she stumbles between life or death.  An invisible weight exponentially crushes her chest as she absently brushes the tip of her fingers against her husband’s breathing body.  

She’s supposed to have gotten used to this. And yet, the fact that she’s still here astounds her.  They should’ve died.  

Magic is strange like that.  It’s so mercurial, where once she wholeheartedly trusted it by flinging herself towards the sky and embracing it with open arms, now she won’t let herself go through this trust exercise.  She tosses and turns every night, and when she manages to get some sleep, all she can see are flashes of green.  All she can hear are distant cries.

They should’ve died.

But she’s still here.

And James.

She knows he’s not sleeping well either. The way he’s clutching his pillow with paling knuckles sort of ruins the image of a James that used to sleep with laughter lines on his face.  There’s just pain etched there now.

They’ve lost so much at the hands of magic.  They have each other and yet have lost each other too.

James no longer laughs as much as he used to.  Even when his parents died, he still managed to crack a few jokes.  When they had Harry, sparks would fly out of his wand, sending the toddler in fits of giggles.

She used to be a woman of action. They both still are. They can’t sit still in the morning now, their hands twitching as they wait to run out of their house and immerse themselves into whatever work they have for the day.  Then they come back, exhausted so as not to think about the shadow that lingers over them that they dare not talk about. 

She keeps absent-mindedly caressing her husband’s bare chest hoping to absorb his pain.  All she absorbs is how warm he feels compared to her icy palms.

She inhales, hoping it would settle the anxiety-ridden burden on her back.  It gives her back aches and it’s like she’s carrying a fucking boulder 24/7.  

They’re both carrying it, she remembers.

She tries breathing again but it gets stuck in her throat. She keeps trying.  The ball of breaths seemingly just gets bigger, like a tree stretching its roots and warping the sidewalks.

She knows she’s hyperventilating, so she grasps James’ arm hard enough to rouse him from his fitful sleep.

He glares at her, thinking she’d awakened him accidentally, but she sits up wheezing as tears start to well in her eyes.  It’s only then that he flies up and wraps her in his arms. His body just envelops her and she succumbs, melting away at his touch.  He rubs his hands over her shoulders, making shushing noises to lull her back.  His heart pounds against her back, and he whispers at her to breathe with him, so they can match their sadly beating hearts.

She keeps a vice grip on his arms.  She doesn’t realize she’s sobbing until she feels her nose running.  James whispers nonsensical things he doesn’t really believe either.

_It’s okay._

_You’ll be okay._

_We’ll be okay._

She wants to scream about the unfairness of it all. She wants to trash their room, their house, her life.

Instead, she moans and sobs harder.

James warns her she’s going to vomit if she keeps crying, but she doesn’t care at all.  All she would bring back to this world would be more pain.

_What’s the point?_

She slams her fists against the bed, her nails biting her skin.

What’s the point?

This time she thinks she says out loud because James stops his ministrations.

The point, he says, is to live.

It’s so simple, how he says it, pressing his lips to her forehead in the hopes of imprinting the words on her body.

Live, because the universe is shit and always tries to fuck up their lives.

Live, because they can.

He caresses the red hair he’s still so enamored with, hooking his chin on her shoulder.  She feels raw, she’s cried so much.  His eyes search her face when she turns to look at him and smiles wetly.

We’re such a mess, how did we end up here, she whispers into the night that’s dead as can be.

He softly shakes his head, because he knows as much as she does how it happened.  She presses a kiss to the side of his forehead hoping it conveys the love she still feels for him underneath all the rubble of grief.

I can still hear him, James, she says.  Her voice cracks but she knows he heard her.

I do too, all the fucking time, he says back, and he might be crying too.  His dreams were riddled with what they used to have.

She can’t sleep, the night too quiet where once there was the anticipation of their baby’s cries.

She wants to beg him to go back to sleep, even as they fall back to bed and this time he’s the one absentmindedly brushing his fingers against her collarbones, staying wrapped around each other.

Instead, they wait for a cry that won’t be heard again.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry don't hate me


End file.
